New understanding and quantification of the regime dependence of aerosol-cloud interaction for studying aerosol indirect effects

Chen, Jingyi; Liu, Yangang; Zhang, Minghua; Peng, Yiran

doi:10.1002/2016GL067683

Title: New understanding and quantification of the regime dependence of aerosol-cloud interaction for studying aerosol indirect effects

Journal Article · Sun Feb 28 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Geophysical Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL067683· OSTI ID:1245387

Chen, Jingyi ^[1]; Liu, Yangang ^[2]; Zhang, Minghua ^[1]; Peng, Yiran ^[3]

Stony Brook Univ., Stony Brook, NY (United States)
Stony Brook Univ., Stony Brook, NY (United States); Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)

In this study, aerosol indirect effects suffer from large uncertainty in climate models and among observations. This study focuses on two plausible factors: regime dependence of aerosol-cloud interactions and the effect of cloud droplet spectral shape. We show, using a new parcel model, that combined consideration of droplet number concentration (N_c) and relative dispersion (ε, ratio of standard deviation to mean radius of the cloud droplet size distribution) better characterizes the regime dependence of aerosol-cloud interactions than considering N_c alone. Given updraft velocity (w), ε increases with increasing aerosol number concentration (N_a) in the aerosol-limited regime, peaks in the transitional regime, and decreases with further increasing N_a in the updraft-limited regime. This new finding further reconciles contrasting observations in literature and reinforces the compensating role of dispersion effect. The nonmonotonic behavior of ε further quantifies the relationship between the transitional N_a and w that separates the aerosol- and updraft-limited regimes.

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Research Organization:: Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC00112704

OSTI ID:: 1245387

Report Number(s):: BNL-111944-2016-JA; R&D Project: 2016-BNL-EE631EECA-Budg; KP1703020

Journal Information:: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 43, Issue 4; ISSN 0094-8276

Publisher:: American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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